"There it is--that seals it."
Meg wiped her face with her big pinafore, and seemed uncomfortable.
"Aren't you comin', Gran'ma?" she pleaded.
"Eh, tha' wants ter 'orry me off--what's thai say, George--a deep un, isna 'er?"
"Dunna go, Aunt, dunna be hustled off."
"Tush--Pish," snorted the old lady. "Yah, tha' 'rt a slow un, an' no mistakes! Get a candle, Meg, I'm ready."
Meg brought a brass bedroom candlestick. Bill brought in the money in a tin box, and delivered it into the hands of the old lady.
"Go thy ways to bed now, lad," said she to the ugly, wizened serving-man. He sat in a corner and pulled off his boots.
"Come an' kiss me good night, George," said the old woman--and as he did so she whispered in his ear, whereat he laughed loudly. She poured whisky into her glass and called to the serving-man to drink it. Then, pulling herself up heavily, she leaned on Meg and went upstairs. She had been a big woman, one could see, but now her shapeless, broken figure looked pitiful beside Meg's luxuriant form. We heard them slowly, laboriously climb the stairs. George sat pulling his moustache and half smiling; his eyes were alight with that peculiar childish look they had when he was experiencing new and doubtful sensations. Then he poured himself more whisky.
"I say, steady!" I admonished.
"What for!" he replied, indulging himself like a spoiled child and laughing.
Bill, who had sat for some time looking at the hole in his stocking, drained his glass, and with a sad "Good night," creaked off upstairs.
Presently Meg came down, and I rose and said we must be going.
"I'll just come an' lock the door after you," said she, standing uneasily waiting.
George got up. He gripped the edge of the table to steady himself; then he got his balance, and, with his eyes on Meg, said:
"'Ere!" he nodded his head to her. "Come here, I want ter ax thee sumwhat."
She looked at him, half smiling, half doubtful. He put his arm round her and looking down into her eyes, with his face very close to hers, said:
"Let's ha'e a kiss."
Quite unresisting she yielded him her mouth, looking at him intently with her bright brown eyes. He kissed her, and pressed her closely to him.
"I'm going to marry thee," he said.
"Go on!" she replied, softly, half glad, half doubtful.
"I am an' all," he repeated, pressing her more tightly to him.
I went down the passage, and stood in the open doorway looking out into the night. It seemed a long time. Then I heard the thin voice of the old woman at the top of the stairs:
"Meg! Meg! Send 'im off now. Come on!"
In the silence that followed there was a murmur of voices, and then they came into the passage.
"Good night, my lad, good luck to thee!" cried the voice like a ghoul from upper regions.
He kissed his betrothed a rather hurried good night at the door.
"Good night," she replied softly, watching him retreat. Then we heard her shoot the heavy bolts.
"You know," he began, and he tried to clear his throat. His voice was husky and strangulated with excitement. He tried again:
"You know--she--she's a clinker."
I did not reply, but he took no notice.
"Damn!" he ejaculated. "What did I let her go for!"
We walked along in silence--his excitement abated somewhat.
"It's the way she swings her body--an' the curves as she stands. It's when you look at her--you feel--you know."
I suppose I knew, but it was unnecessary to say so.
"You know--if ever I dream in the night--of women--you know--it's always Meg; she seems to look so soft, and to curve her body--"
Gradually his feet began to drag. When we came to the place where the colliery railway crossed the road, he stumbled, and pitched forward, only just recovering himself. I took hold of his arm.
"Good Lord, Cyril, am I drunk?" he said.
"Not quite," said I.
"No," he muttered, "couldn't be."
But his feet dragged again, and he began to stagger from side to side. I took hold of his arm. He murmured angrily--then, subsiding again, muttered, with slovenly articulation:
"I feel fit to drop with sleep."
Along the dead, silent roadway, and through the uneven blackness of the wood, we lurched and stumbled. He was very heavy and difficult to direct. When at last we came to the brook we splashed straight through the water. I urged him to walk steadily and quietly across the yard. He did his best, and we made a fairly still entry into the farm. He dropped with all his weight on the sofa, and leaning down, began to unfasten his leggings. In the midst of his fumblings he fell asleep, and I was afraid he would pitch forward on to his head. I took off his leggings and his wet boots and his collar. Then, as I was pushing and shaking him awake to get off his coat, I heard a creaking on the stairs, and my heart sank, for I thought it was his mother. But it was Emily, in her long white nightgown. She looked at us with great dark eyes of terror, and whispered: "What's the matter?"
I shook my head and looked at him. His head had dropped down on his chest again.
"Is he hurt?" she asked, her voice becoming audible, and dangerous. He lifted his head, and looked at her with heavy, angry eyes.
"George!" she said sharply, in bewilderment and fear. His eyes seemed to contract evilly.
"Is he drunk?" she whispered, shrinking away, and looking at me. "Have you made him drunk--you?"
I nodded. I too was angry.
"Oh, if Mother gets up! I must get him to bed! Oh, how could you!"
This sibilant whispering irritated him, and me. I tugged at his coat. He snarled incoherently, and swore. She caught her breath. He looked at her sharply, and I was afraid he would wake himself into a rage.
"Go upstairs!" I whispered to her. She shook her head. I could see him taking heavy breaths, and the veins of his neck were swelling. I was furious at her disobedience.
"Go at once," I said fiercely, and she went, still hesitating and looking back.
I had hauled off his coat and waistcoat, so I let him sink again into stupidity while I took off my boots. Then I got him to his feet, and, walking behind him, impelled him slowly upstairs. I lit a candle in his bedroom. There was no sound from the other rooms. So I undressed him, and got him in bed at last, somehow. I covered him up and put over him the calfskin rug, because the night was cold. Almost immediately he began to breathe heavily. I dragged him over to his side, and pillowed his head comfortably. He looked like a tired boy, asleep.
I stood still, now I felt myself alone, and looked round. Up to the low roof rose the carven pillars of dark mahogany; there was a chair by the bed, and a little yellow chest of drawers by the windows; that was all the furniture, save the calf-skin rug on the floor. In the drawers I noticed a book. It was a copy of Omar Khayyam, that Lettie had given him in her Khayyam days, a little shilling book with coloured illustrations.
I blew out the candle, when I had looked at him again. As I crept on to the landing, Emily peeped from her room, whispering, "Is he in bed?"
I nodded, and whispered good night. Then I went home, heavily.
After the evening at the farm, Lettie and Leslie drew closer together. They eddied unevenly down the little stream of courtship, jostling and drifting together and apart. He was unsatisfied and strove with every effort to bring her closer to him, submissive. Gradually she yielded, and submitted to him. She folded round her and him the snug curtain of the present, and they sat like children playing a game behind the hangings of an old bed. She shut out all distant outlooks, as an Arab unfolds his tent and conquers the mystery and space of the desert. So she lived gleefully in a little tent of present pleasures and fancies.
Occasionally, only occasionally, she would peep from her tent into the out space. Then she sat poring over books, and nothing would be able to draw her away; or she sat in her room looking out of the window for hours together. She pleaded headaches;
Mother said liver; he, angry like a spoilt child denied his wish, declared it moodiness and perversity.
CHAPTER II - A SHADOW IN SPRING
With spring came trouble. The Saxtons declared they were being bitten off the estate by rabbits. Suddenly, in a fit of despair, the father bought a gun. Although he knew that the squire would not for one moment tolerate the shooting of that manna, the rabbits, yet he was out in the first cold morning twilight banging away. At first he but scared the brutes, and brought Annable on the scene; then, blooded by the use of the weapon, he played havoc among the furry beasts, bringing home some eight or nine couples.
George entirely approved of this measure; it rejoiced him even; yet he had never had the initiative to begin the like himself, or even to urge his father to it. He prophesied trouble, and possible loss of the farm. It disturbed him somewhat, to think they must look out for another place, but he postponed the thought of the evil day till the time should be upon him.
A vendetta was established between the Mill and the keeper, Annable. The latter cherished his rabbits:
"Call 'em vermin!" he said. "I only know one sort of vermin--and that's the talkin' sort." So he set himself to thwart and harass the rabbit-slayers.
It was about this time I cultivated the acquaintance of the keeper. All the world hated him--to the people in the villages he was like a devil of the woods. Some miners had sworn vengeance on him for having caused their committal to gaol. But he had a great attraction for me; his magnificent physique, his great vigour and vitality, and his swarthy, gloomy face drew me.
He was a man of one idea: that all civilisation was the painted fungus of rottenness. He hated any sign of culture. I won his respect one afternoon when he found me trespassing in the woods because I was watching some maggots at work in a dead rabbit. That led us to a discussion of life. He was a thorough materialist--he scorned religion and all mysticism. He spent his days sleeping, making intricate traps for weasels and men, putting together a gun, or doing some amateur forestry, cutting down timber, splitting it in logs for use in the hall, and planting young trees. When he thought, he reflected on the decay of mankind--the decline of the human race into folly and weakness and rottenness. "Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct," was his motto. With all this, he was fundamentally very unhappy--and he made me also wretched. It was this power to communicate his unhappiness that made me somewhat dear to him, I think. He treated me as an affectionate father treats a delicate son; I noticed he liked to put his hand on my shoulder or my knee as we talked; yet withal, he asked me questions, and saved his thoughts to tell me, and believed in my knowledge like any acolyte.
I went up to the quarry woods one evening in early April, taking a look for Annable. I could not find him, however, in the wood. So I left the wildlands, and went along by the old red wall of the kitchen garden, along the main road as far as the mouldering church which stands high on a bank by the roadside, just where the trees tunnel the darkness, and the gloom of the highway startles the travellers at noon. Great trees growing on the banks suddenly fold over everything at this point in the swinging road, and in the obscurity rots the Hall church, black and melancholy above the shrinking head of the traveller.
The grassy path to the churchyard was still clogged with decayed leaves. The church is abandoned. As I drew near an owl floated softly out of the black tower. Grass overgrew the threshold. I pushed open the door, grinding back a heap of fallen plaster and rubbish and entered the place. In the twilight the pews were leaning in ghostly disorder, the prayer-books dragged from their ledges, scattered on the floor in the dust and rubble, torn by mice and birds. Birds scuffled in the darkness of the roof. I looked up. In the upward well of the tower I could see a bell hanging. I stooped and picked up a piece of plaster from the ragged confusion of feathers, and broken nests, and remnants of dead birds. Up into the vault overhead I tossed pieces of plaster until one hit the bell, and it "tonged" out its faint remonstrance. There was a rustle of many birds like spirits. I sounded the bell again, and dark forms moved with cries of alarm overhead, and something fell heavily. I shivered in the dark, evil-smelling place, and hurried to get out of doors. I clutched my hands with relief and pleasure when I saw the sky above me quivering with the last crystal lights, and the lowest red of sunset behind the yew-boles. I drank the fresh air, that sparkled with the sound of the blackbirds and thrushes whistling their strong bright notes.
I strayed round to where the headstones, from their eminence, leaned to look on the Hall below, where great windows shone yellow light on the flagged courtyard, and the little fish-pool. A stone staircase descended from the graveyard to the court, between stone balustrades whose pock-marked grey columns still swelled gracefully and with dignity, encrusted with lichens. The staircase was filled with ivy and rambling roses--impassable. Ferns were unrolling round the big square halting-place, half-way down where the stairs turned.
A peacock, startled from the back premises of the Hall, came flapping up the terraces to the churchyard. Then a heavy footstep crossed the flags. It was the keeper. I whistled the whistle he knew, and he broke his way through the vicious rose-boughs up the stairs. The peacock flapped beyond me, on to the neck of an old bowed angel, rough and dark, an angel which had long ceased sorrowing for the lost Lucy, and had died also. The bird bent its voluptuous neck and peered about. Then it lifted up its head and yelled. The sound tore the dark sanctuary of twilight. The old grey grass seemed to stir, and I could fancy the smothered primroses and violets beneath it waking and gasping for fear.
The keeper looked at me and smiled. He nodded his head towards the peacock, saying:
"Hark at that damned thing!"
Again the bird lifted its crested head and gave a cry, at the same time turning awkwardly on its ugly legs, so that it showed us the full wealth of its tail glimmering like a stream of coloured stars over the sunken face of the angel.
"The proud fool!--look at it! Perched on an angel, too, as if it were a pedestal for vanity. That's the soul of a woman--or it's the devil."
He was silent for a time, and we watched the great bird moving uneasily before us in the twilight.
"That's the very soul of a lady," he said, "the very, very soul. Damn the thing, to perch on that old angel. I should like to wring its neck."
Again the bird screamed, and shifted awkwardly on its legs; it seemed to stretch its beak at us in derision. Annable picked up a piece of sod and flung it at the bird, saying:
"Get out, you screeching devil! God!" he laughed. "There must be plenty of hearts twisting under here"--and he stamped on a grave--"when they hear that row."
He kicked another sod from a grave and threw at the big bird. The peacock flapped away, over the tombs, down the terraces.
"Just look!" he said, "the miserable brute has dirtied that angel. A woman to the end, I tell you, all vanity and screech and defilement."
He sat down on a vault and lit his pipe. But before he had smoked two minutes, it was out again. I had not seen him in a state of perturbation before.
"The church," said I, "is rotten. I suppose they'll stand all over the country like this soon--with peacocks trailing the graveyards."
"Ay," he muttered, taking no notice of me.
"This stone is cold," I said, rising.
He got up too, and stretched his arms as if he were tired. It was quite dark, save for the waxing moon which leaned over the east.
"It is a very fine night," I said. "Don't you notice a smell of violets?"
"Ay! The moon looks like a woman with child. I wonder what Time's got in her belly."
"You?" I said. "You don't expect anything exciting, do you?"
"Exciting!--No--about as exciting as this rotten old place--just rot off--Oh, my God!--I'm like a good house, built and finished, and left to tumble down again with nobody to live in it."
"Why--what's up--really?"
He laughed bitterly, saying, "Come and sit down."
He led me off to a seat by the nor
th door, between two pews, very black and silent. There we sat, he putting his gun carefully beside him. He remained perfectly still, thinking.
"Whot's up?" he said at last. "Why--I'll tell you. I went to Cambridge--my father was a big cattle dealer--he died bankrupt while I was in college, and I never took my degree. They persuaded me to be a parson, and a parson I was.
"I went a curate to a little place in Leicestershire--a bonnie place with not many people, and a fine old church, and a great rich parsonage. I hadn't overmuch to do, and the rector--he was the son of an earl--was generous. He lent me a horse and would have me hunt like the rest. I always think of that place with a smell of honeysuckle while the grass is wet in the morning. It was fine, and I enjoyed myself, and did the parish work all right. I believe I was pretty good.
"A cousin of the rector's used to come in the hunting season--a Lady Crystabel, lady in her own right. The second year I was there she came in June. There wasn't much company, so she used to talk to me--I used to read then--and she used to pretend to be so childish and unknowing, and would get me telling her things, and talking to her, and I was hot on things. We must play tennis together, and ride together, and I must row her down the river. She said we were in the wilderness and could do as we liked. She made me wear flannels and soft clothes. She was very fine and frank and unconventional--ripping, I thought her. All the summer she stopped on. I should meet her in the garden early in the morning when I came from a swim in the river--it was cleared and deepened on purpose--and she'd blush and make me talk with her. I can remember I used to stand and dry myself on the bank full where she might see me--I was mad on her--and she was madder on me.
"We went to some caves in Derbyshire once, and she would wander from the rest, and loiter, and, for a game, we played a sort of hide and seek with the party. They thought we'd gone, and they went and locked the door. Then she pretended to be frightened and clung to me, and said what would they think, and hid her face in my coat. I took her and kissed her, and we made it up properly. I found out afterwards--she actually told me--she'd got the idea from a sloppy French novel--the Romance of a Poor Young Man. I was the Poor Young Man.